Covert Action, Mental Health, And A Cold War Legend: The Story Of Frank Wisner
BOOK REVIEW: THE DETERMINED SPY: The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner
By: Douglas Waller/Dutton
Reviewed by: Michael Sulick
The Reviewer — Michael Sulick is a consultant on counterintelligence and global risk. He served as Chief of Counterintelligence and Director of the Clandestine Service at CIA and is the author of Spying in America: Espionage From the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War and American Spies: Espionage Against the United States from the Cold War to the Present.
REVIEW — Douglas Waller’s The Determined Spy is not only an excellent history of the early CIA’s covert action operations but also a human drama of a central figure in that history plagued by a crippling mental disorder. Frank Wisner, OSS officer and top CIA official in the immediate postwar years, is largely unknown to the general public but spearheaded major CIA covert action programs to combat the Soviet Union in the hotly contested first years of the Cold War.
The comprehensive biography of Wisner and history of the OSS and early CIA covert action are woven into a compelling narrative, richly supported by Waller’s exhaustive research and spiced with anecdotes from a wealth of sources. Wisner was the architect of these covert action operations: infiltrating emigres into Eastern Europe to weaken new communist regimes; toppling potentially anti-American regimes in Iran and Guatemala; and directing a host of front organizations to spread anti-communist propaganda and counter Soviet influence around the globe.
The author includes a detailed biography of Wisner’s pre-CIA years as a student, track star, businessman, attorney, OSS officer and family man. These details are critical to understanding Wisner since, already in those early years, he exhibited signs of the bipolar disorder that afflicted him. Diagnosis and treatment of the disease were still unknown at the time, and so Wisner’s symptoms were dismissed by him and others as hyperactivity, job stress, nothing more than the quirks of a driven personality.
Wisner’s OSS experience in Cairo, Istanbul and Bucharest shaped the ardent and energetic cold warrior’s CIA career. In Romania, his interactions with his counterparts of our then Soviet ally convinced him of their future intentions and inspired the aggressive covert operations he would lead in the early years of the CIA.
Experts are gathering at The Cipher Brief’s NatSecEDGE conference June 5-6 in Austin, TX to talk about the future of war. Be a part of the conversation.
Wisner headed the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination, an appropriately anodyne title for its covert action mission. The author highlights a striking feature of the unit, the experimental nature of its operations. The CIA, after all, was the first national intelligence agency in America’s then-170-year history. Though initially advised by the British, early CIA officers ran operations on a trial and error basis and, as the author notes, the many errors cost loss of lives and millions of dollars. During these early Cold War years, the U.S. government was confronted with new and unprecedented foreign crises, and the CIA’s covert action arm was left to its own devices without sufficient manpower, funding or oversight. Wisner was largely building the airplane while it was in flight, orchestrating complex, risky operations with significant potential for failure and blowback on U.S. foreign policy.
For example, Wisner’s years long struggle to infiltrate emigres into Albania and other East European communist regimes would eventually fail because of leaks from within, the ubiquitous monitoring of communist security services and the treachery of British spy Kim Philby.
Despite that, Wisner later achieved success in overthrowing governments in Iran and Guatemala, two countries considered hostile to U.S. interests. Even then, however, Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA officer Wisner assigned to lead the Iran operation, later admitted that its success was helped by a great deal of luck and the Iranian government collapse was inevitable without any CIA assistance. The bottom line is that covert action is incredibly difficult and always fraught with unexpected obstacles no matter how well planned.
Wisner and the CIA also had to confront two adversaries, not only the Soviet Union but those within his own government. No lover of bureaucracy, Wisner clashed numerous times with other agencies of the national security community. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and he developed a mutual dislike of each other; to add to Wisner’s challenges, Hoover investigated Wisner for years, hoping to prove he was a spy because of his activities in Romania.
The Iran success, as Waller notes, was “a powerful stimulant.” The U.S. national security apparatus and especially the White House saw enormous potential in Wisner’s covert action operations. President Eisenhower, in particular, viewed Wisner’s unit as a key tool of U.S. foreign policy. Covert action became the middle ground between diplomacy and military action, a cost-effective alternative as well as a political benefit thanks to its “plausible deniability”—though that deniability was often strained. Presidents since then have relied on this middle ground to advance U.S. foreign policy interests, sometimes with success, sometimes not. For better or worse, Frank Wisner was its pioneer.
The Cipher Brief brings expert-level context to national and global security stories. It’s never been more important to understand what’s happening in the world. Upgrade your access by becoming a subscriber.
Throughout these years, Wisner increasingly exhibited signs of the bipolar disorder that was tormenting him. Two international events triggered a serious escalation of his illness. The brutal Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 proved Wisner’s infiltration of emigres into East Europe was doomed to failure. The communist regimes, reinforced by the Soviet army, were too formidable against dissent, and U.S. administrations believed interventions would exacerbate the repression. The joint British, French and Israeli invasion of Egypt, opposed by the US, also shocked Wisner since he felt betrayed by his close British colleagues. Wisner’s mental decline was now undeniable, and he eventually entered a mental institution.
Many colleagues and friends believed Wisner was simply burned out from his total immersion in the mission. But, as the author points out, others in CIA functioned normally despite the job stress, operational failures or setbacks in foreign policy. Wisner’s “burnout” resulted from a condition that still remained a mystery to medical science. While he recovered after time in the institution, he relapsed and ultimately took his own life.
The author provides a candid appraisal of both the achievements and failures of Wisner’s operations and of CIA covert action in general. Despite the successful overthrow of governments in Iran and Guatemala, the long-term consequences of both damaged U.S. foreign policy. In Iran the Shah’s regime was harshly repressive, protests led to the detention of American hostages, and an anti-American Islamic government came to power and today strives to acquire a nuclear capability. The Guatemala operation was the first of others in the region and spawned a wave of anti-Americanism that lingers today.
Waller’s biography is a long overdue recognition of a key but largely unknown figure, a CIA “trailblazer.” The book is also an invaluable contribution to understanding the rewards and pitfalls of covert action as a tool of American foreign policy.
The Determined Spy earns a prestigious 4 out of 4 trench coats
The Cipher Brief participates in the Amazon Affiliate program and may make a small commission from purchases made via links.
Interested in submitting a book review? Send an email to [email protected] with your idea.
Sign up for our free Undercover newsletter to make sure you stay on top of all of the new releases and expert reviews.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.